Tech giant Apple has reportedly removed the popular podcast app Pocket Casts from its app store in China at the request of the Chinese communist government.
Voice of America reports that the popular podcasting app Pocket Casts has been removed from Apple’s app store in China at the request of the Chinese government.
On Wednesday, the company that developed the app tweeted that at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) the Pocket Casts app had been removed from the iOS app store. “We were contacted by the CAC through Apple around 2 days before the app was removed from the store,” it said.
Pocket Casts has been removed from the Chinese App store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China. We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship. As such we won't be censoring podcast content at their request.
— Pocket Casts (@pocketcasts) June 11, 2020
Another iOS podcast player, Castro, also stated on June 4 that it had been removed from the Chinese app store by Apple. Castro stated that around 10 percent of its user base is in China, when asked why they think the app was removed, it replied that it might have been the company’s support of the protests in Hong Kong.
We think it might have been our support of the protests in the Discover tab. We were not given specifics.
— Castro Podcasts (@CastroPodcasts) June 7, 2020
Pocket Casts is ranked as the 92nd most popular app in the news app section on Apple’s U.S. website where the Twitter app is number one. Apple did not immediately reply to VoA’s request for comment.
Apple has previously removed apps from its Chinese app store at the request of the Chinese government. According to a Transparency Report released by Apple, for the first six months of 2019 the firm received 56 requests from the Chinese government to remove third-party apps from its store. In comparison, it received two requests from Vietnam and five from Russia. Apple took down 194 apps in China, none in Vietnam and 16 in Russia.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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